ETHICS AND RELIGION. 727 



can not get a sufficient supply of the best of specimens. Teach 

 your pupils to bring them in. Take your text from the brooks 

 and not from the booksellers. ... It is better to have a few forms 

 well studied than to teach a little about many hundred species. 

 Better a dozen forms thoroughly known as the result of the first 

 year's work, than to have two thousand dollars' worth of shells 

 and corals bought from a curiosity store. The dozen animals will 

 be your own. . . . You will find the same elements of instruction 

 all about you wherever you may be teaching. You can take your 

 classes out and give them the same lessons, and lead them up to 

 the same subjects in one place as another. And this method of 

 teaching children is so natural, so suggestive, so true. That is the 

 charm of teaching from Nature. No one can warp her to suit his 

 own views. She brings us back to absolute truth so often as we 

 wander." 



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ETHICS AND RELIGION. 



By CRAWFORD HOWELL TOY, 



PROFESSOR OF HEBREW IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



"XT~0 subjects occupy men's attention more than morality and 

 -L ^ religion. They are patent, ever-present facts, always intrud- 

 ing themselves on our thoughts, and always demanding consider- 

 ation. They have formed subjects of human reflection since the 

 race of man began ; nations have wrought out practical schemes, 

 philosophers have invented systems ; thousands of generations 

 have talked over individual facts and ideas. Yet men are far 

 from being at one on the nature of the two and the relation be- 

 tween them. 



One opinion, held widely in our own times, is that religion is 

 the creator of ethics an opinion not unnaturally suggested by 

 the fusion of ethical and religious ideas and practices which exists 

 among us. The masses of our communities are reared in a re- 

 ligious atmosphere. Their first impressions of duty and right are 

 colored by religious ideas and supported by religious sanctions. 

 The most generally accepted and revered ethical codes are con- 

 tained in the sacred books, and the most prominent preachers of 

 morals are ministers of religion. Our courts of law dispense jus- 

 tice in the name of the Divine Being. Kings rule by the grace of 

 God, and the Congress of the United States has stamped a decla- 

 ration of the national trust in God on a silver coin. In many 

 countries religion appears at the birth of a child, to initiate it by 

 a symbolic ceremony into the Church ; almost everywhere when 

 life is departing religion comes to care for man's future ; and it is 

 religion which announces the close of life by the solemn depo- 



